If Kiva would post entrepreneurs in the U.S. for whom loans might provide an opportunity to escape from real poverty, I might be okay with Kiva’s including the U.S. as one of its areas of concentration. The type of entrepreneurs included in the first U.S. group, however, even though some had moving stories, didn’t even approach the kind of people I’d once thought Kiva had been started to try to reach.

A group calling themselves "Unhappy Kiva Lenders" argues that since entrepreneurs in the developed world have access to many more resources, receive larger loans and pay them back more slowly, the move betrays their original interest in and support of the site.

"It no longer makes loans exclusively to countries where the needs are greatest, but adds countries where needs are least," the group said in a statement.